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Video Professor wants the book thrown at anonymous critics

There's one computer skill that the Video Professor, John Scherer, does not want anybody to learn: how to anonymously post disparaging remarks about his company on the Internet.

Scherer - a national infomercial sensation for two decades - has filed a lawsuit in Denver's federal court against 100 "John and Jane Does" who've trashed his computer tutorial products and sales practices online.

His lawsuit claims some of these writers may be competitors and seeks damages for false advertising and defamation.

"I have a right to find out who those people are," Scherer said Friday, "and I fully intend to exercise my right."

Scherer has been granted a subpoena that asks the owner of two websites -

com">infomercialratings.com and infomercialscams.com - to cough up the identities of people who've posted messages.

Folks have routinely complained that the Video Professor sucks customers in with a free offer, and if they are not careful following instructions, they soon find unwanted charges on their credit cards.

Scherer - whose company records all sales calls - says it's just not true. "If somebody has a problem, we just refund them - end of story," he told me.

Nevertheless, these complaints persist. Scherer suspects many of them are made-up stories from competitors - and he's on a mission to prove it.

Paul Levy, an attorney for Washington, D.C.

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-based Public Citizen, says the Video Professor's subpoena is a blatant affront to the First Amendment rights of freedom of expression.

Anybody on the airwaves - whether it's Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or a graying, mustachioed, bald guy who sells videos on late-night TV - should expect anonymous Web critics, said Levy, who has taken on the legal plight of the websites' owner, Leonard Fitness Inc.

"If he's big and he's out there, he's going to get positive and negative reviews. Live with it," Levy said.

On Friday, Levy wrote a letter to Video Professor attorney Gregory Smith of Fairfields and Woods in Denver objecting to the subpoena on First Amendment grounds.

"I don't look at this with quite the same bent," Smith told me. "His client (Leonard Fitness) is a plague on the environment as far as I'm concerned." These commercial sites make money by bashing some products while promoting others, Smith said.

Mostly what I found on the sites were the same variety of complaints about the Video Professor that I've heard for years.

"You need to read everything that they send you or you will get stuck with paying for a free video with more coming every month," Don of California wrote on one of the websites. "This is (an) unethical business practice and a way to make money on people that don't read the fine print."

"I ordered it and got charged the shipping and handling plus a few extras!" wrote Laura of Arizona. "After trying it for a few days, I decided to return it and found out later that my credit card was not only charged the (shipping and handling) but also $69.99 for supposedly other DVDs I never ordered."

The Denver/Boulder Better Business Bureau has also heard these complaints, said spokeswoman Susan Liehe.

"They were just called on the carpet for what we think were unclear provisions in their ad and sales processes," she said, citing a Sept. 4 meeting with the company that Scherer attended.

Video Professor president Bettye Harrison said the meeting was simply to address confusion between the company's Web offer and its TV offer, which differ.

Not everything people write about the Video Professor is bad.

"I tried Video Professor 3 years ago and have used them ever since," wrote Ladd of Arizona. "My wife wanted me to teach her, I knew I couldn't do that so I had her try Video Professor and she loved it."

Scherer says his business has prompted only a couple hundred complaints after serving 10 million customers with products that teach people how to use popular software products such as Microsoft Word or Excel.

If any of these complaints are true, he wants the opportunity to address them, and he can't if they are anonymous.

"I've been in business over 20 years, and I take every complaint to heart," he said.

John Soma, a University of Denver law professor and the executive director of the Privacy Foundation, said that if Scherer can prove that his competitors are posing as anonymous consumers and flaming him, he may have a case.

"The First Amendment does not protect you from fraud," he said.

But Steven Zansberg, an attorney for The Denver Post, said Scherer will face high legal hurdles in trying to enforce the subpoena to discover who is writing these posts.

"Courts have recognized that the same First Amendment protections for anonymous speech that apply off line apply online as well," Zansberg said.

Scherer remains determined.

"I personally do not believe that you can be anonymous and bash people and get away with it under the First Amendment," he said. "I will stay with this case, and I will get the names that I am requesting. I will pursue this until the Supreme Court tells me I can't get them."

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